Article by
Barbados Today

Published on
April 11, 2015

The island’s main public sector trade union is making two new demands on the Freundel Stuart administration.

Acting general secretary of the National Union of Public Workers (NUPW) Roslyn Smith said in a statement today the union was putting the Government on notice that former National Conservation Commission (NCC) workers who qualified for severance “must be paid” by next Wednesday.

NUPW acting general secretary Roslyn Smith

It also insisted that a date for the Employment Rights Tribunal to start hearings must be set before month-end. In fact, Smith said the first hearing must be heldby April 30.

However, the union did not say what it would do if no action was taken in either matter.

Smith took issue with the length of time it was taking the tribunal to meet to hear the retrenched workers’ case.

“Shortly after Queen’s Counsel Hal Gollop was appointed as chairman of the tribunal, the Minister of Labour Dr Esther Byer assured that they were ‘moving apace to ensure that, from the beginning of February, everybody was good to go’,” the union boss noted in the statement.

Earlier this week, Gollop told Barbados TODAY that the NCC matter would be among the first three cases dealt with when the body begins hearings in two weeks.

With respect to severance for the retrenched NCC workers, Smith said she had been reliably informed that the money would have been paid by the first week in March.

However, the NUPW general secretary said when she checked with the management of the commission, she was told they had not received any such information.